Day 114, 18th September, Chengdu
The drive to Chengdu was uneventful. A big city of 8 million, or 18 million including its satellite towns. People live in massive tower blocks and the motorways cross each … Read more
The drive to Chengdu was uneventful. A big city of 8 million, or 18 million including its satellite towns. People live in massive tower blocks and the motorways cross each … Read more
A long hard drive from Foping on the way to Chengdu with motorway all the way. The beautiful quality of the road surface saves a fortune on diesel, but the … Read more
A drive of 131 miles through the Qingling mountains took us to the small town of Foping. The road from Xi’an to Chengdu has 137 tunnels of varying length throuh … Read more
Torrential rain in the morning so, after having a rather tasty soup at a cheap cafe for Chinese workers, we got a taxi (amazingly cheap) to the Big Wild Goose … Read more
What more can be said about the Terracotta Warriors? Everyone has seen them on the telly, but to see them in real life is truly incredible. The only drawback being … Read more
The following morning we walked a short distance to the tourist centre for the fabulous Maijishan grottoes where the carving of Buddhas into the hillside of a mountain shaped like … Read more
Because we are all keen on roughing it rather than stopping at posh hotels, Green sorted out a lovely homestay place where we could camp in the yard and use … Read more
We got up too late for the 10.00 am guided tour of the Labrang monastery so booked for the 3 pm one. OAPs are free! Green took us up a … Read more
A herd of cows visited us in the morning accompanied by some men in Chairman Mao outfits. They were members of the Tu minority ethnic group who are Tibetan Buddhists. … Read more
The first two hours of the day consisted of driving painfully slowly through Zhangye, a huge industrial city which is growing very rapidly and high-rise blocks are springing up in … Read more